I love the 5e3. Just not mine! Please help.

[JohnRose81]

[JohnRose81]

Well, here is where I stand, bought all new guts. Only original things are the cab, chasis, tubes, and speaker. Built it all out in a couple hours. Powers up and I get voltage on the filter caps. Only prob is no sound. Ha! My luck. Wiring looks good. I'll post pics and voltage readings. Anything off y'all's head of what it could be? Checked inputs and they look wired up right....same with speaker jacks. And yup, I ised the right jacks in the right place.

[Chuck H]

+1
That's why I've never bought a special tool for it. I don't keep the rubber band on the pliers either. I put it on when I need to. That's how seldom I need a heat sink using the right solder at the right temp.

[The Dude]

Not saying the heat sinking ideas aren't good ones in some instances, but I suspect the problem was caused by using the incorrect solder requiring more heat to be applied. If the correct solder is used, this shouldn't be much of an issue.

[Chuck H]

I have a pair of small tipped needle nosed pliers and I wrap a rubber band on the handle to hold them shut. This is my soldering heat sink. Point is that nothing special needs to be purchased. It'll likely work better, but it isn't necessary.

[eschertron]

A couple tricks I picked up as a beginner and still use (guess that means I'm still a beginner?) are
1) use a little clamp-on heat sink (looks like a tiny clothespin, but metal) to make a thermal barrier between the iron and a sensitive component. I use it on cap leads and on pot pins. Always. I have a couple different styles, pretty sure you can get some kind of this device at radio shack.
2) I have a 100W/140W soldering GUN that I keep exclusively for nailing ground leads onto the backs of pots. This goes right along with Chuck's get in - get out philosophy. I actually count while I'm soldering. if I've counted to 5 and the solder hasn't started to flow, then I stop and rethink. more time on a joint than that and I'm afraid of damaging a component.

[The Dude]

I'm with Chuck. No reason to scrap the build. Just reflow all of the joints with the correct solder. It shouldn't take that long. It's already laid out with everything connected (kind of). Heck, there are often times I resolder entire circuit boards where they've used the correct solder and still do a crappy job of it. This isn't much different than that scenario.

[Chuck H]

It's a bit of a PITA to re flow all the joints, but it's still easier than building a whole new board and reconnecting every lead. Nothing to lose by trying. Just use flux core solder and melt a little into each joint. It should flow just fine.

[JohnRose81]

Thanks Chuck! I didn't use a solder with a flux core. I'm, at this point, 99% certain I have a multitude of bad solders, broken parts due to overheating, and overall sloppy work. With that, I congratulate myself on growing the balls to actually order all of this and sit down and do it, and then when it didn't turn on, explore and find out why all the way to the point where it was singing and humming along great - minus the reduced power and low end. ESPECIALLY since I've NEVER soldered anything together, never used a multimeter, and certainly know absolutely nothing about amps or their components.

So with that, I have ordered all new guts, and I'm going to do it again. This won't defeat me. I will be back with an update.

[Chuck H]

Those pots can't take prolonged iron contact. I can see a lot of new builder indications in your work. You'll get better and faster. The most important things IME to make the job easier is to:

1) Use good solder with a flux core.
2) Use a good iron. A soldering station with temp control.
3) Make sure you have access figured out before committing. Not having good access can mean prolonged iron contact and failed pots or cold joints.
4) Have the joint set up with leads and wire in place. Apply the iron and then press the solder to the spot where the iron tip meets the work. Feed solder until the whole joint is wet and get out.

It's possible that you dislodged a lead or lost contact somewhere when you were moving wires around. You may want to "re flow" much of the amp. This is a cold solder joint image taken from your photos.

[JohnRose81]

Thank you G. I'm building this amp for a few reasons: save $2k and not buying boutique or original. I'm learning about caps and resistors. I'm building something. I'm learning about amps. I really want to be great with fender brown faces, tweeds, black faces, and silver faces. I'm great at working on guitars (electrics) and basses. But I know nothing of amp psychology. How can I be a musician and know nothing about amps.

As for your suggestion, I have a brand new speaker that I tried but nothing. I was fooling with the wires on the normal channel volume knob and saw some extra solder and was trying to get it off when the pin on the pot started to wiggle pretty good. Anyway, now the whole amp doesn't work. I'm sure it wasn't the volume pot, but I'm sure it had something to do with the wires and/or the caps/resistors it was attached to. How does one check the integrity of their solders? I'm going to test all points. And in goin to buy a new 1m volume pot. Ha!

[g1]

The normal channel volume pot would only affect the normal channel.
Looking over your voltages, I don't see any major issues. It is unfortunate you got caught up in measurement problems that had nothing to do with the amp (meter and outlet issues). It is quite an accomplishment that you didn't get frustrated and give up, many novices would have.
So now that you have solved the volume pot issue, the remaining issues are low volume and lack of bass.
Have you tried another speaker? If not that is the first thing to do (or try this speaker with another amp).

[JohnRose81]

So my normal channel volume pot is bad. Would that be the total problem?

[Chuck H]

Those are likely to be secondary taps for different speaker impedances. Intended to be used with an impedance switch for an amps output. If your amp doesn't have an impedance switch they should just be cut flush (no wire protruding from the insulation) and shrink tubed shut to insulate them. They should be kept away from any preamp leads.

What were your amp and guitar settings for the video???

[JohnRose81]

Just noticed, there is a orange and green wire coming from the OT that doesn't connect to anything. Well according to the schematic, what do I do with them?